Electronic mail (“e-mail”) has revolutionized communications. Before the advent of e-mail, communications in writing were typically transferred via a postal service or facsimile. However, both methods suffer from various problems. For example, mail sent via the postal service takes a relatively long time to reach the destination, and the cost to decrease the delivery time rises quickly if a special delivery service is used. Facsimile transmission often suffers from quality and availability problems, as a facsimile transmission is typically of lower quality than the original and many individuals do not have easy access to facsimile machines.
E-mail solved or minimized several of those problems, as the transmission time of an email is very short and the quality of the received communication is identical to that of the original. However, one problem with typical e-mail usage is the relative low security of e-mail transmissions. Specifically, an e-mail communication typically travels throughout the Internet such that the email could possibly be intercepted and read. One method to minimize the problems of eavesdropping is to encrypt communications by using, for example, a public-key cryptography solution. Using such a solution, only the intended recipient can decrypt the e-mail. However, such an encryption process is often cumbersome and many people do not wish to go through the routine of decrypting the e-mail and/or sending their keys to e-mail senders.
Moreover, certain types of businesses often wish to send private messages to its customers. For example, financial institutions, such as banks, credit card companies, brokerages, and the like, often send periodic statements to account holders to inform the account holders as to the performance of their accounts. Such information is intended to be private and it is not desirable to allow third parties to read these types of messages. Therefore, many businesses still use postal services to provide such services. However, in addition to the limitations discussed above, usage of postal services usually results in additional expenditures for the business, such as envelopes, paper, and postage, that may not be necessary if electronic statements were utilized.
To alleviate some of the security issues, companies used secure websites to allow access to information. Specifically, if the company wishes for a customer to view a statement, the business sends an e-mail to the customer, wherein the e-mail contains a Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). The URL leads the customer to a secure area of the network, wherein the secure area contains the statement in question. This is typically accomplished by providing a Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) encoding of the site located at the URL in question. However, such a setup still suffers from a variety of problems. For example, the e-mail being sent to the customer containing the URL is not secure, meaning that one can intercept the message and access the URL in question. Accordingly, a need exists for allowing users to access messages in a more secure manner.